
Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission.
Web site: www.AdventistMission.org
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Helping Mission Succeed
When Dan Jacko isn’t busy helping people learn to walk again, he’s
assisting his church members with their spiritual walk. Pastor Dan, a
professional physical therapist, is also serving as a lay pastor for the
Mountain View Conference in the two church district of Elkins and
Parsons, West Virginia. He also teaches biology and chemistry to the
academy level students at Highland Adventist School in Elkins. His
wife, Cheryl, is an educator and registered nurse and serves as the
principal of the kindergarten through twelfth grade school. Their son,
Jeremy, teaches Bible, math, and history.
Believing mission is important, every other year, Pastor Dan leads the
students and church members on a mission trip. So far, they’ve been to
Mexico, Panama, Honduras, and, in 2014, Costa Rica.
While in Costa Rica, they built a church during the day and presented
evangelistic meetings and Vacation Bible Schools in four different
churches in the evenings. In spite of his own full schedule, Pastor Dan
was impressed with the dedication of the pastor in Costa Rica, who
shepherds six churches and doesn’t have a car.
Not only do Pastor Dan and his members build churches abroad—
they also build them at home, where they recently completed their own
church and school, located on five and a half acres (2.2 hectares), com-
pletely debt-free.
The most recent challenge for Pastor Dan and the 80-member Elkins
church is keeping up with the many Bible study requests coming from
their community. Over the course of three mailings in 2013 and 2014,
everyone in the state of West Virginia received an invitation for the Voice
of Prophecy’s Discover Bible course. The response was overwhelming—
with 10,000 people indicating that they would like to have Bible studies.
Of that number, more than 200 came from the Elkins and Parsons area.
“Some are face-to-face Bible studies,” explains Pastor Dan, “and oth-
ers prefer to take them by correspondence, which are then graded by our
local church members.” The local churches are responsible for purchas-
ing the lessons and providing postage for correspondence students.
“What makes this area even more of a mission field,” says Pastor Dan,
“is that you’ll get a lot of people who say, ‘I believe this,’ but if their
family isn’t in favor of it, a lot of them just won’t make the commitment.”
Nevertheless, Pastor Dan and the small churches he leads see reaching
people for Jesus in their territory as an important mission and are willing
to give the time, effort, and funds needed to help it succeed.